Comm Org Fellow Profile: Nic Clyde

Nic is a graduate of the 2014 Fellowship program and is currently NSW Community Coordinator with Lock the Gate Alliance.

Why are you passionate about Community Organising? Why is organising an important part of the solution in your community?

One of the great things about being part of Lock the Gate is working directly with mining-affected communities. I am lucky to have formed friendships and connection with people working to protect farmland, water, health, heritage and culture. I’m now spoilt for choice when it comes to dropping in for a cuppa and a fresh anecdote in regional NSW (my family stopped for the night recently on a farm near Lismore to hear some classic stories from the Bentley Blockade and to check out a garage full of hand-built drag racing cars).

Affected communities, working together to protect their patch can be powerful. If you have been lucky enough to see The Bentley Effect doco, you’ll know what extraordinary power the NSW Northern Rivers community generated to win their campaign against Metgasco. If you’ve visited Gloucester, you might have met some of the people who organised themselves to triumph over AGL’s plans to turn their area into a gasfield. If you’ve been to Bulga, you’ll be familiar with the epic and ground-breaking battle fought by local residents against the Warkworth mine. If you’ve spent time in the Southern Highlands, you’ll know that locals have declared their towns coal-free and are working hard to protect the Highlands and Sydney’s drinking water from Hume Coal’s proposed mine. These communities are smart, generous, strategic and building power. Community engagement is a crucial ingredient.

How has the Community Organising Fellowship impacted on your current work?

The Fellowship has been a rock for me. I am part of a great network of people who are unfailingly generous in sharing their time, skills and experience. I have access to resources and templates that I often share with community groups and new campaigners. And I have confidence, skills and experience from the immersive Fellowship training.

We have a saying at Lock the Gate: ‘our job is to help people find the thing they can do’ to make a difference. The Fellowship helped me find the thing I can do!

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This 90-minute workshop helps differentiate between transactional approaches that aim to mobilise large numbers of people and relational approaches that form deeper connections and identify shared values and self-interest. Participants assess the relational/transactional potential of various tactics, then create strategies that incorporate both.

Tools to Engage is an ever-changing compilation of the best resources from across the social sector, chosen for their particular focus on supporting constituent engagement and addressing systemic challenges, such as race, gender, and power inequities in the sector. These resources are aimed at organizational development experts, management support organizations, and internal and external consultants, but may be used by anyone who finds them useful.

There are 140 million people engaged in social change work across the globe. These are the ChangeMakers. The ChangeMakers podcast is a weekly, half-hour globally focused series that tells stories and lessons about the world of social change.

Each week, host Dr. Amanda Tattersall picks a theme, like “how to win using coalitions” or “when anger works and the power of direct action.”

Then she travels across the globe to meet ChangeMakers who have been running campaigns that have tried to make an impact in that space. Each episode features two stories told in the style of This American Life. A crafted narrative ties each story together, where multiple voices lay out what has happened. Hopes, fears and regrets are revealed. Story by story, lessons about what works and what doesn’t work in the world of social change are teased out.

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The Community Organising Guide is a unique resource for campaigners, community leaders and activist educators. It’s a...

Testimonials

Martin Luther King Jr. ‘Where do we go from here?’

Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action with education is a weak expression of pure energy. Deeds uninformed by educated thought can take false directions. When we go into action and confront our adversaries, we must be armed with knowledge as they. Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents.

1.0

2015-02-11T15:49:46+00:00

Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action with education is a weak expression of pure energy. Deeds uninformed by educated thought can take false directions. When we go into action and confront our adversaries, we must be armed with knowledge as they. Our policies should...

Arthur Schopenhauer

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.

2014-03-30T08:01:54+00:00

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.

http://www.thechangeagency.org/testimonials/arthur-schopenhauer/

Sun Tsu, ‘The Art of War’

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before a defeat.

2014-03-30T08:00:57+00:00

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before a defeat.

http://www.thechangeagency.org/testimonials/sun-tsu-the-art-of-war-2/

Mohandas Gandhi

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent.

2014-03-30T08:29:28+00:00

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent.

http://www.thechangeagency.org/testimonials/mohandas-gandhi/

Building Powerful Community Organizations

Ninety percent of people join a group because a person asked them. A few join groups after reading a flyer or newspaper ad. Very few, but often highly motivated, people go looking for groups to join. Most people join because someone they know asks them. Face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball. This is an important finding. If you want people to join your group, you have to ask them, in person. This is what works. Person-to-person. One-on-one.

2014-05-19T17:54:45+00:00

Ninety percent of people join a group because a person asked them. A few join groups after reading a flyer or newspaper ad. Very few, but often highly motivated, people go looking for groups to join. Most people join because someone they know asks them. Face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball. This is an important finding. If you want people to join...

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